Ghost goals make Fifa look dumb
A system for detecting when a ball crosses a goal-line should have been in place long ago, and the league will be judged harshly for the delay
Hey, referee! That was a goal! Or it was very, very close.
To be fair to Howard Webb and his team of touchline assistants, it wasn't humanly possible for them to judge whether it was or wasn't. It all happened in the blink of an eye.
The ball thudded off Manchester United's crossbar, down onto the turf and back up to head-height with Papiss Cisse. The Newcastle United striker from Senegal, not particularly tall but plenty quick, then headed it as hard as he possibly could at United's goal. Newcastle were 2-0 down at this point. A goal from Cisse could have put his team back in the game.
But United's young Spanish keeper, David De Gea, got a gloved hand to it. Diving acrobatically to his left, he scooped the ball away - either as it was crossing, or after it had crossed, United's goal-line.
Which was it? We'll never know. Machines exist that could have told us. But they're still not being used in football - making the sport and people who run it look silly.
Because this is silly. In years to come, we'll look back on this era when technology could have solved a glaring problem but wasn't quickly deployed and wonder how this was possible. How could the administrators of the world's most popular game have been so boneheaded and sluggish?